


2am and i'm cursing your name

by guycecil



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Humanstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 03:51:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/646252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guycecil/pseuds/guycecil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave and Terezi's problem isn't that they're together. It's that they don't know how to break up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	2am and i'm cursing your name

**Author's Note:**

> Title unashamedly ripped off Taylor Swift. Fuck you if you don't think that Taylor Swift sings the theme song to Dave and Terezi's relationship.

Dave and Terezi’s problem isn’t that they’re together. It’s that they don’t know how to break up.

Everyone else sees it long before they do. John warns Dave from the first day, hissing at him (just before Dave gets up to stroll across the cafeteria halfway through their senior year of high school to finally ask her out), “She’s bad news, Dave, come on, be rational about this.”

Karkat throws a fit – like an actual, for real, honest to god, throwing things around the room, tears in his eyes fit – when he finds out that Terezi said yes. He screeches at her, as she kicks him out, that “That asshole is going to hurt you so bad and you will regret every single _fucking_ moment you’ll have ever spent with him!”

Rose looks wary, but all she says is, “Just be careful, Dave. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Vriska snorts, “He’s not gonna be half as good in bed as I was.”

Jade just looks sad when Dave turns her down when she asks him to the winter formal and mumbles, “I guess I should’ve seen this coming. Well, just… I’m glad you’re happy. And uh, watch your back with that one. I’d hate for any of the stuff that happened to Karkat to happen to you.”

Aradia and Nepeta exchange uncertain glances, and Sollux glares at the TV as he jerks at the controls to the game they’re playing. “Just don’t get screwed over, you moron.”

And they follow the advice, for the most part. They’re wary of each other for a while – too long, to be honest, because it gets to the point where they’re both bored to death on their dates, and it takes Dave being brave and taking her back to his one night when Bro’s out of town to get things interesting again. She’s not on the pill and he doesn’t have any condoms because he seriously doubted he’d be getting any, but somehow they get lucky and neither of them ends up with an STD and Terezi doesn’t show up at school a month later shoving a pregnancy test in Dave’s face, so they both figure that they’re doing pretty well with this whole thing.

(They have a lot of sex after that. Like, a lot.)

The winter formal doesn’t completely suck, either. The groups were gonna get mashed together somehow anyway – which is _completely_ Rose and Kanaya’s fault, but then, everybody kind of saw that coming. Terezi catches herself wondering (as she slow dances with her arms wrapped precariously around Dave Strider’s middle because she can’t reach his neck and her face buried in his chest because that’s as high as she comes up) if anybody saw _them_ coming.

They do some stupid stuff as they wrap up senior year – like decide to go to the same college, and agree to share an on-campus apartment, and move in two weeks early to “get used to campus life”. John and Karkat both pass on their warnings, though this time Dave gets one from Karkat as well as John. He doesn’t tell Terezi that he’s been thoroughly warned not to get her pregnant, or cheat on her, or leave her, or hit her, or try to control her, or break up with her without notice, or start drinking (Dave actually laughs at that one, because it is _so_ obvious that Karkat hasn’t been to a single high school party in his entire life), or get her into drugs, or, god forbid, break her heart.

Terezi doesn’t get a warning from John, but she does meet his eyes across the room once, briefly, when they throw a party to break in the new room. She doesn’t take pleasure in the way he still looks unsure about her, like she’s about to break his best friend.

(Dave most certainly does take pleasure in the way Karkat’s eyes almost bug out of his head when Terezi precariously pours Dave a drink, and not because Terezi nearly spills beer all over them both.)

They fight, of course. They’ve always fought, it’s just that before it was about who was going to top or why Terezi refuses to learn to drive. Now it’s still about who’s going to top and why Terezi refuses to learn to drive, but it’s also about why Dave refuses to get a job, and why Terezi’s books are always all over the floor, and why they both keep buying the wrong cereal. Their fights always end in compromise (Terezi gets a job at the campus library, Dave starts leaving his clothes on the floor, they switch to ramen because at least in that case they both know it doesn’t fucking matter what they get as long as it’s edible), but they’re never compromises that they’re both happy with, and they end up fighting about the compromises as often as they do the original issues in the end.

(The only good part about the compromises that everything always ends in spectacular make-up sex, and that’s one thing that they can both agree on.)

Terezi knows from the moment she crosses the first “t” on her college apps that she’s majoring in law, so when they get to school and she’s got enough credits already to start as a sophomore, she immediately declares her major and is extremely proud of herself because of it. Dave congratulates her about it, but he has no idea what he wants to do, and Terezi knows his heart isn’t really in it, because she knows he’s as jealous as fuck that she’s always known what she wants to do with her life and he has no fucking clue. So two weeks later, when he’s poring over the school’s undergrad website, she brings it up, hoping to help him, and he flinches and shuts his laptop and they get into a screaming match about it that has the neighbors banging on the walls and shouting at them to just shut the fuck up and have make-up sex already.

They do, but it’s not make-up sex, it’s angry, vicious, biting at each other’s skin and drawing blood and leaving bruises and breaking a lamp sex. Terezi shrieks as she digs her nails into his shoulders, and Dave braces one hand on the headboard and grits his teeth, trying to hold back his curses, but they slip out anyway in a stream of _fuckshitjesusfuckingchristtz_ and there’s no fucking playing around or teasing with this kind of stuff. They finish yelling at each other and then they start clawing at each other and dragging each other to the sparsely decorated bedroom.

Afterwards, exhausted emotionally and physically, Dave lets his arms give out and rolls away from her and curls up in a ball, not knowing what to say or do with himself. He feels her roll away as well, and the covers pull away from him slightly. He’s not sure if he falls asleep or if he just loses track of several hours, but when he comes back to himself, it’s seven pm and Terezi’s got her arms wound around him and she’s crying softly into his neck and her gorgeous red hair is fanned out across his pillow.

(It’s the hair that got him in the beginning, the flash of red as she turned the corner, walking away from him. She died it black once, in sophomore year, and Dave hadn’t even really known her then, but it had stung him way down deep in a part of him he didn’t like to admit existed.)

He extricates the arm she’s got pushed underneath his body and rolls over and pulls her close, and she starts crying in earnest – huge, racking sobs that pull at both of them. He just holds her, burying his nose in her hair and trying to hold himself together.

At one point, in between fits, she whispers, “I hate this, I hate this, I want us to go back to normal, why is this _happening_ to us?”

Dave doesn’t answer, because the only answer he has for her is “I don’t know, babe”, and he doesn’t think that’s what she wants to hear.

After that, things do go back to normal, a little. Dave starts looking for a job and Terezi keeps her books in careful, alphabetically arranged stacks on the coffee table in the living room and they sit down together every Sunday morning to make up a shopping list and then they go to the store together and if they squabble over prices versus quality, well, it’s nothing a normal couple doesn’t fight about. The whole thing is horribly, disgustingly domestic and they both love it so much that it hurts and Terezi finds herself throwing things around the apartment when Dave’s not home if she thinks too much about losing it.

They hit a dry point in terms of their sex life, though. The condoms in the drawer in the nightstand expire and Dave throws them out but doesn’t bother to buy a new box. Terezi forgets to take her pill one day, and the next morning, she rolls the bottle around in her hands, unopened, and then puts it back into the medicine cabinet before she starts brushing her teeth. She doesn’t throw it away, because she’s hopeful, but she doesn’t bother to take it the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that.

The hickeys fade, the sheets get washed less, and they both find that they have a lot more time for… other stuff. Nothing in particular, just stuff. Terezi Skypes with her mom a couple nights a week, meets up with Aradia or Nepeta or Sollux, or, once, Karkat, and sees a movie or has dinner or plays video games or whatever. She resolutely ignores the voicemails and text messages from Vriska, but she feels guilty as hell doing it. Dave takes up cleaning, of all things, and actually goes to class, and finds that job (it’s a shitty one, the morning shift at a crappy diner down the street from their apartment, but it pays, and to be honest, they need the money more than either of them will admit), and gets back to his photography, to his comic.

John sends out a Facebook message one day, three weeks after their dry spell hits, says he and Rose and Kanaya are planning to be in town in a couple weeks and they were hoping to get everyone together. Terezi answers yes for them, but they don’t fight about it, because they Do Not Fight about anything these days, even who’s gonna top (because neither of them is topping at the moment) or why Terezi refuses to learn how to drive. Two weeks later, they meet outside the diner after Dave’s shift one Saturday morning and hitch a ride with Karkat out to a park (“A fucking park,” Dave grumbles, his only real protest to the whole thing, and Terezi rolls her eyes behind her ridiculous glasses and says, “Yes, Dave, I do believe that is where most picnics are held”). Dave gets relegated to the backseat, but he refuses to argue it because he’s Not the Same Guy He Was in High School and he will not fight with his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend/sometimes best friend.

(They pick up Jade about twenty minutes out of town anyway, and then Terezi gets sent to the backseat too and Karkat greets Jade with a cheerful little kiss on the cheek and huh, who’da thunk it. Terezi finds herself thinking back to senior prom and Rose and Kanaya and wonders if they came out of nowhere like Jade and Karkat or if everyone knew it was gonna happen like Rose and Kanaya.)

The picnic goes fairly well. It’s nice to see old faces again, like Rose and John, who Dave hasn’t seen in fucking forever, or Eridan and Feferi, who have somehow managed to stay friends through all this time, and who don’t even feel real to Terezi anymore, even when she pulls Feferi into a hug and Fef squeals and hugs her back.

(Nothing feels real to Terezi anymore except for Dave, but it’s okay in some kind of sick, twisted way, because nothing feels real to Dave anymore except for Terezi, either.)

It’s all sickeningly normal, this group of friends meeting up and having fun. John and Equius and Tavros throw a football around, and Gamzee tries to get everyone to try the pie he made for about an hour before Karkat steps in and throws the whole thing away. Feferi and Sollux lay back on one of the blankets and stare at the clouds as they pass by and giggle at the shapes they see there while Eridan and Kanaya aggressively play chess for hours.

John and Dave disappear for an hour or so to get beer. The moment they get in the car and John starts the engine, he looks over at Dave and smiles and says, “You two look happy.”

Dave barks a laugh at that and just shakes his head, then rearranges himself in the seat. “Guess you could say that.” He doesn’t mean for it to slip out like that, but he can’t lie to John. He’s always been shit at lying, but he’s the worst around John.

Blue eyes scorch the side of his face, unshaven and lightly covered in stubble from lack of shaving. "Trouble in paradise?”

“Has to be paradise first for there to be trouble,” Dave says.

“Shit.” John pulls onto the highway and puts the pedal to the metal, racking up his speed by a good twenty miles an hour. “What’s the problem?”

“Shit, I don’t know.” That’s a lie, and it’s another shitty one, because Dave knows. He fucking knows. The problem is that neither of them picks up after themselves but always expect the other to do it for them. The problem is that neither of them has ever said the words but is constantly expecting the other to say them. The problem is that they’re both people with addictive personalities who’ve spent their entire lives surrounded by people who can pull them back and now they’re all alone in a room with each other for the better part of their days and neither of them knows how to step back and take a breath.

John can probably see right through it, but he just says, “If there’s really that much of an issue, maybe you should try talking to her?”

“Not like I haven’t tried, man.” Not technically a lie, because they have tried to talk about it. But the last time they tried to talk about it ended up turning into the last time they had sex and even if Dave doesn’t feel like he’s dying of blue balls, he does feel a little hurt about the whole thing and he’s scared to bring it back up in case it brings up the sex and he’s pretty sure they’re both still a little terrified of whatever that was, and they don’t need to be rehashing that.

(He doesn’t really want to admit any of this, but the part about it that he least wants to admit is that he’s scared to bring it up because this is Terezi and he can’t fuck this up any more than he already has because as stupid as it is, this shit _means_ something to him – means something to him in ways that only shit with John and shit with Bro has ever meant to him, and he hates that at the same time that it terrifies the fuck out of him.)

“Maybe you just aren’t using the right words,” John says, and fuck if that isn’t typical John, seeing straight past all the complicated, ridiculous bullshit and seeing only what he wants to see. It’s bitten him in the ass a couple times, but right now, it’s all that Dave needs to hear.

“Yeah, maybe,” he says quietly, and turns to stare out the window.

(He thinks the words _I love you_ over and over as they get closer to the store. It makes his head hurt and his heart pound and he doesn’t know which is worse.)

Back at the park, Vriska shows up, and Terezi quickly takes her leave, grabbing Karkat’s hand and dragging him into the forest at the end of the clearing they’ve taken hold of. He goes along mostly willingly, only giving up light protests, and eventually they sit down with their backs up against a fallen tree and pick at the few bits of grass that have managed to sprout up among the weeds and fallen leaves. It feels like they’re teenagers again, cutting class to gossip and drink soda and smoke cigarettes.

(It was the one vice Terezi managed to corrupt Karkat with, and she will be forever grateful that it was the only one, because she got Dave with the booze and the sex and the cigarettes that he hates so much but can’t quit and she got Sollux, too, with the booze and she even got Aradia with the gambling, and she will never forgive herself for any of that, but she thinks she can make up for  it a little by reminding herself and whoever’s listening up there that she didn’t fuck up Karkat.)

Karkat tells her about Jade, about their dumb, cheesy, romantic first date, and he tells her about stupid romcoms and dumb chick flicks and candlelit dinners and their first kiss and he tells her about their first time, all of it in a quiet, happy whisper that she hasn’t heard from him in a long time, since they dated, maybe. She thinks about a high school cafeteria and a 24-hour IHOP and senior prom and going back to his apartment while his brother was out of town and they could do what they want, and she reaches over and grabs Karkat’s hand without thinking and tries to pretend that the tears aren’t there.

Karkat doesn’t notice – of course he doesn’t – but he does give her hand a little squeeze as he tells her about the first time he told Jade he loved her, and fuck, they’re already at that point and Terezi didn’t even know they were dating. Jesus Christ. Some best friend/ex-girlfriend she is. She makes a firm, angry promise to herself right then and there that she’s not going to let this slip by again.

She makes the mistake of sniffling once, rubbing at her nose. She’s actually on the tail end of her crying – she can feel Karkat’s stories zipping back up the stupid problems that she and Dave are having, and her tears are going to stop soon. But she makes the fucking mistake of sniffling, and Karkat’s head turns for the first time in forever, and he’s suddenly stricken and half screeches, “Are you crying?”

“Fuck, no, leave me alone.” She lets go of his hand and glares defiantly at him through her glasses, or, where she thinks he is.

“Fucking liar,” he hisses. “What is it? Is it Dave?”

“No, it’s not fucking _Dave_ ,” she spits, but her voice breaks on the last word, and she hisses out a breath and turns her head away and draws into herself.

“Don’t fucking do to this to me, Terezi Pyrope,” Karkat whispers, his voice deadly serious. “What is it? Did he hurt you? I’ll rip his limbs off, I swear to god, I—”

“Jesus, Karkat, he didn’t hurt me, relax!” She swats at him, and manages to find his shoulder. “We’re just having a rough patch, it’s no big deal.”

“No big deal, my ass, what did he do?”

“He didn’t do _anything_ , will you relax?” She shifts her whole body so that she’s facing him and he can’t get away.

“Not until you tell me what’s going on!”

“ _Nothing’s_ going on!” she shouts, and it’s the truth, and she thinks a little too much of the truth slips out because it’s come out sounding just a shade too bitter, just a little too truthful, and she knows Karkat will catch it from the moment she says it, and she’s right, and she hates it when she’s right.

“What the hell does that mean?”

And suddenly she can’t stop herself, because this is Karkat and she’s always told Karkat too much, from that first stupid fuck in Dave’s Bro’s apartment with no pill and no condom because neither of them were expecting anything to happen, and she’s spilling everything out for him to hear.

“And we don’t fight, we just dance around the problem and nothing ever gets solved because we’re both so fucking afraid to bring up the issue in case it sets off whatever’s left of that stupid fucking thing, and we don’t fuck, and I don’t even know why, because it’s all we’ve ever had and now we’re fucking _domestic_.” She spits out the word because she hates how much she likes it. “We make breakfast for each other and we remember anniversaries and we go out to dinner and see movies and shit and we never once wake up wrapped around each other and we sure as hell don’t have sex.”

And it hurts _so much_ , because that isn’t them. That’s never been them. They’re not the domestic, breakfast-making, anniversary-remembering, dinner-eating, movie-seeing couple and they never will be. They’re the driving-too-fast, drinking-too-much, fucking-too-often, taking-too-many-risks couple, and that will always be them more than _this_ is.

Maybe the fights weren’t right for them, but this isn’t either. Dave and Terezi will never be domestic, they will never do domestic right. Dave and Terezi will have sex right. They’ll fuck things up right. That’s who they are. Dave and Terezi are sneaking out at three am, hopping fences and lighting up cigarettes in between classes and making out in the girls’ bathroom. Dave and Terezi are shoplifting from gas stations, Dave and Terezi are having sex for the first time and not giving a fuck if they end up with a baby, Dave and Terezi are rough, brutal, vicious make-up sex that they both cry over. Dave and Terezi are loose ends and untied shoelaces and jeans with holes in them and little kids who pick at scabs. Dave and Terezi are fast and dangerous and Terezi is all that on her own and she doesn’t need Dave to make her feel that way but it sure feels nice to have someone by her side who feels the same.

She doesn’t know how to put that into words though, so she just grips the ground, probably gets dirt under her fingernails, and waits for Karkat to say something.

He doesn’t, not for a long time, and when he does, he says exactly what she knew he would say, but she never thought that the words would ever make her feel so empty and so determined at the same time.

They go back to the others then, and John and Dave are back with the beer. Terezi can’t see him, but she can imagine it – the setting sun catching his sunglasses and throwing shadows on his face, catching on his nose and his too pale lips and throwing a pink sheen over his skinny face and a long shadow on the ground through his skinny body. She can imagine the bottle raised to his lips and his laugh when someone, Rose, she thinks, makes a joke. Karkat gives her hand a squeeze and goes to join John and Jade and Vriska, who are all laughing at something stupid, and Terezi tears herself away from him to go to Dave.

(She’s kidding herself she thinks she can live without this man in her life.)

They both get awfully, horribly drunk. They’re both really gonna hate themselves in the morning, but at the moment they can’t be bothered to care. They’re both thinking about the same thing, but they’re thinking about it differently and neither knows that the other is thinking about it. Terezi’s old hyena laugh comes back and the moonlight shines on her teeth, reminding Dave of the first time they kissed, and she was all teeth and no tongue, and he is overwhelmingly struck with the urge to kiss her, so he does.

They make out for a while. A very long while. It’s sloppy and uncontrolled and lazy, but it’s the first time they’ve done anything other than quick pecks on the lips before one or the other leaves for class or work, and so as shitty as it is, it feels perfect. Dave remembers the curve of her waist from breast to hip, and Terezi relearns the milky texture of Dave’s teeth and the strawberry tang of his tongue.

It’s Karkat who finally breaks them apart, stone-cold sober and irritated, and he dumps their sorry, drunk asses into the backseat of his minivan, and helps a very intoxicated Jade into the passenger seat, and then he drives Dave and Terezi back to their apartment and doesn’t bother to watch if they get upstairs alright and then he disappears with Jade to do god knows what – though they all have their suspicions.

Well, Dave and Terezi make good on everyone else’s suspicions, and they tumble upstairs and through their always unlocked front door and into bed, still drunk, still kissing, and horribly turned on. They fuck slow and lazy and drunk, and then hard and fast and jerky, and then slow again. None of it is romantic, but it’s the best fucking thing either of them has had in a long time, so neither of them is complaining.

(They fall asleep naked and tangled up in dirty, messy sheets, their clothes all over the floor and Terezi’s neat stacks of books knocked over and their dignity hidden somewhere deep underneath all the mess.)

In the morning, Dave gingerly cleans himself up in the bathroom and pulls on a pair of boxers and pads out into the living room. Terezi’s already set herself up at the kitchen table with a plate full of eggs and a steaming mug full of coffee and her laptop open in front of her. Dave’s got the same setup waiting for him and he takes a deep, thankful breath before sliding into his chair, because he’s got a bitch of a headache and he kind of hates his life about the same amount as he loves it right now because he is hung over as fuck.

They both eat in silence for a while, Dave looking warily through his phone for drunk texts or calls, but he finds nothing, and when he finishes eating and sets his fork down, he looks up at Terezi and he says, with more surety than he’s ever said anything in his life, “I love you.”

It should be the perfect moment. It should be an epiphany, or a moment where she leans over the table and presses her lips to his and then smacks him and tells him to shut the fuck up and go wash the sheets. At the very least, there should be a slight smile and another bite of eggs, and then a mumbled confession back to him.

Instead, she unplugs her earphones and shuts off the software that reads her the news and her emails and her online assignments and she says, “I think we should break up.”

Dave stares at her for a long, _long_ time, and wonders what the hell his life has become. “What?” he finally says, because he is an eloquent motherfucker when he wants to be, but right now he’s kind of been reduced to the level of a five year old.

“This isn’t working,” Terezi says, setting her fork down and clasping her hands together. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Tz?” he asks, his voice hoarse and rasping and he can feel his heartbeat pounding in his chest, screeching _no_.

“I’m talking about how either we fight about everything and throw things at each other and have awful, unhealthy sex or we do this domestic bullshit and hate ourselves and wonder where we went wrong.”

“That’s not…” He can’t come up with anything good, though, because she’s right. _Fuck_ , she’s right, just like she’s always right and hell, he fucking hates when she’s right.

“I can’t do this anymore, Dave,” she whispers. “Wondering if we’ll ever be enough for each other. I did that with Karkat, I did that with Vriska, and I’m not doing it with you. Not when we can hurt each other so much more than Karkat and I or Vriska and I ever could. I’m sorry.”

He can’t even pretend he’s not listening, because he’s hearing every single word, and it’s cutting through him like ice, or a knife dipped in freezing water before tearing into his skin, or Terezi’s nails raked down his back while he fucks her, ragged and painful.

“You don’t mean that.” His voice is low and deep and it hurts to speak – he has to work the words around the lump in his throat and _damn it_ , he’s not gonna fucking cry, he’s Dave Strider, and Striders don’t cry. _Fuck_ , what is _wrong_ with him?

(Terezi gets up then, closes her laptop and puts her dishes in the sink and heads to the bedroom, moving with a surety that a blind girl shouldn’t have in an apartment as messy as theirs. Dave watches her go and thinks that _that_ , this girl, this relationship, this life, is what’s wrong with him.)

She hides in the shower until he leaves for work, and when she hears the front door click shut behind him, she shuts the water off and reaches out for a towel. She dresses slowly, and then turns to the bedroom and gets to work.

She pulls a suitcase from the closet and fills it with her clothes and her shoes and the sexy underwear they bought together because she would have no idea what she was looking for and as many books as she can fit. Then she turns to the hallway closet and pulls out the cardboard boxes they never threw out after they moved in and she fills them with books and DVDs and knick knacks.

She hesitates over the gifts – the things she bought for him, the things he bought for her, the things that other people bought for them both. She ends up taking the collection of dragon figurines he bought for every birthday, every anniversary, and she takes the books on foreign law from Bro, but she leaves behind the camera her mother bought for him, and she doesn’t even think about touching the dishware Karkat shoved on them, grumbling that “you guys are gonna need to cook at some point.”

She doesn’t cry. She won’t let herself. She tells herself she doesn’t need to, that she’s strong, and Pyropes don’t cry. Not over things like this. This is too stupid, too petty, for her to cry over. He’s just a boy, that’s what she keeps telling herself. That he’s just a boy, and she doesn’t need him, and she never will.

When she’s done, she precariously makes a few trips downstairs with her suitcase and boxes, and she hands them over to Karkat, who’s waiting outside with his minivan and no sign of Jade, and he loads them into the car and waits while she makes one last trip upstairs.

She unplugs her laptop and tucks it under her arm. She slides her glasses over her eyes and reaches for the cane she never uses, flicks it out so that it touches the floor. One tap against the floor immediately broadens her range of vision – she can hear the sofa, six steps to her right, and the kitchen table, right in front of her. It overlays the rest of the sensory input she has – the hum of the fridge through the floor, the smell of Dave’s cologne drifting through the air, the taste of the leftover eggs going bad where they sit on the unwashed dishes in the sink.

(She leaves her keys on the table, and when she goes, even though she knows she won’t see anything, she refuses to look back.)

She’s gone when Dave gets back from a spectacularly horrible day. He had to work a double to make up for some asshole who decided that _this_ was a good weekend to quit, so he ends up not getting home till close to four, and by that time he’s exhausted and weak and he just wants to curl up in a ball in bed and fall asleep.

He notices the change as soon as he steps in the door, though.

It’s everywhere – the change. The stacks of books are gone, there’s no cane hanging on the wall by the door, there’s a set of keys that clang lightly against his when he tosses them onto the kitchen table. But it’s also there in the air of the room. There’s no motion, no jittery, twitching Terezi waiting at other end of a cable Dave can’t see, a cable that ties them together and refuses to break.

He goes to change out of his work clothes and discovers that the closet is noticeably emptier. There’s a suitcase missing from the floor – the red one, which she had specifically picked out for him, saying, “Red suits you better than me,” and he had teased her about it, wrapping an arm around her waist and nipping at her ear and saying, “Nothing suits me better than you,” and she had swatted at him and rolled her eyes behind her ridiculous glasses and said, “That’s not what I meant, you gigantic loser!”

There’s still a teal suitcase on the floor of the closet, but he shuts the door once he’s changed and doesn’t pay any attention to it.

There are circles in the dust on the dresser where her dragons sat, and half of the DVD collection is missing. She left the bottle of pills she stopped taking in the medicine cabinet, but she threw out the boxes of condoms Dave missed on his sweep of the apartment all those months ago when they first hit their dry spell. He wonders if she’s doing it on purpose, trying to show him where she was and where she isn’t, or if it’s just Terezi being Terezi – trying to make a point and forgetting the details.

The cupboards are still full but the rotting leftovers have been cleaned out of the fridge. He washes the still dirty dishes in the sink and leaves them out to dry, then eats her cereal for dinner, seated on the couch with the news on.

He gives up around nine pm and finally trails into the bedroom, changes into a pair of boxers and an old t-shirt a size too big that she forced him into because he told her it had a dragon on the front and then he stares at the bed. It’s been made, the edges of the sheets carefully tucked underneath, and the sheets are freshly washed. When he finally climbs in, he discovers that there’s not a trace of her scent left on them.

There’s thirty bucks under one of the pillows, and he stares at it for a few moments, trying to decide whether he should get up and put the roll of tens in his wallet or tear it to shreds. He ends up putting it on the nightstand next to his shades and tries to get some sleep.

(He wakes up the next morning on the wrong side of the bed with his back pressed up against the wall, and for a moment it actually kind of feels like there’s someone there with her back pressed up against his, too, and he lets himself pretend as he lies there in the darkness till his alarm goes off.)

Terezi finds herself relegated to the pull out couch, because even though Jade isn’t there (Karkat takes her to the bus stop and sends her off home around noon) she doesn’t think it’s wholly appropriate for her to sleep in bed with her ex-boyfriend/sometimes best friend, especially given the fact that she’s broken up with her… Shit, she doesn’t even have the words to describe what the fuck she has going on with Dave.

The couch is lumpy and uncomfortable and it hurts her back. She shifts restlessly and tries to find a more comfortable position but no matter what she does she just can’t get comfy. The sheets are too silky – they remind her of the satin he had back in his apartment with his brother in high school at the same time that they remind her of the threadbare ones they’ve slept between for the past however long, the ones with the holes in the fitted sheet and the stains on the comforter that she can’t see but Dave assures her are there.

She pulls her knees to her chest and listens to reality TV until three am, and even then she wakes up far too early when Karkat, always the early riser, pads sleepily out into the kitchen to make coffee, announcing, “If you want breakfast you can make it yourself.”

She sits up slowly, listening to his footsteps, the song he hums under his breath as he starts a pot of coffee. Her head still aches from the hangover and she still hurts a little from being fucked like that after so many months of nothing, and she pulls her knees up to her chest again and waits until Karkat leaves for class before she finally gets out of bed.

She has a cup of coffee, she showers, puts on some clean pajamas, and then she gets back in bed because there’s nothing else she has to do. She listens to an infomercial for some kind of crazy toothpaste and checks her phone, but there are no messages. Her lips press into a hard line of satisfaction and disappointment – at least he’s getting the message.

(When Karkat gets home, he starts shouting about assholes majoring in gender studies so they can pick up girls and _hello_ , isn’t that kind of the whole fucking opposite of the point of the class?, Jesus fucking Christ, and then he takes one look at Terezi and informs her that they’re having a girl’s day out. When Terezi reminds him that he’s not a girl, he smacks her in the back of the head and shoves her in the direction of the bathroom with a stack of clothes in her hands and tells her to go change.)

Things don’t get better. They don’t get worse, either, but they don’t get better. Dave smokes more, and he hangs out with people less. He pulls doubles at work because he honestly doesn’t have anything else to do, and he goes to class and he actually finally passes the last of his gen. ed. stuff and sits down with his advisor and decides, fuck it, and he goes into film school. John calls him twice a week because Karkat told him what happened (and fuck if Dave will ever understand that relationship; half the time they hate each other and the other half they see chick flicks together because not even Jade will go with Karkat to see some of this shit) and Dave reports to him that yes, he’s eating three square meals a day, yes he’s going to class, yes he’s changing his underwear every night, and then he hangs up on him and curls up in bed with his back against the wall and swears that tomorrow, for sure, he’s going to turn his life around.

Terezi spends entirely too much time with Karkat and Jade, and she smiles when Karkat sidesteps her trying to make plans because he’s got a date with Jade, and she goes to work and she goes to class and she rockets up to first in her class because fuck you, Terezi Pyrope is really fucking smart when she wants to be.

Nobody ever mentions Terezi to Dave, and no one ever mentions Dave to Terezi, and they both go on avoiding the buildings in which the other has classes, and that’s how they spend the better part of their second semester in college.

They both do stupid shit, because they’re still Dave and Terezi. Dave smokes too much and drives too fast and dines-and-dashes with hot girls before he takes them back to their – his – apartment and fucks them through the mattress. He kicks them out in the morning and doesn’t bother promising to call.

Terezi very nearly gets caught shoplifting but Karkat manages to save her ass at the last second and then nearly puts a bullet hole in her head when they get home, screaming that “You can’t afford to do stupid shit like that, you fucking moron!” She drinks too much and she spends too much time studying when she should be going out and having fun but she can’t risk losing her number one spot, so she needs to finish this assignment and she needs it to come out perfectly and then she needs to start studying for this test and then she needs to go out and bum a cigarette off a guy on a street corner.

Neither of them are really sure what they’re accomplishing anymore. It’s easy to lose sight of what you’re working for when you don’t have someone to guide you anymore.

John stays in touch with Rose, and Karkat stays in touch with Kanaya, so when the two announce that they’re both dropping out of school and getting married, the news reaches Dave around the same time it reaches Terezi, and they should probably each consider the fact that the other will probably be at the engagement party, but they’re both so wrapped up in themselves that the idea never even crosses their minds.

It sure as hell crosses their minds when Dave sees Terezi walk into Rose and Kanaya’s ridiculously big house with Karkat, when Terezi hears Dave pause midsentence, only to carry on like nothing happened.

They avoid each other – it’s something they’ve had plenty of practice at these past few months. Terezi manages to avoid Dave when he walks into the room with several bottles of the expensive stuff, announcing that he found the “real shit” and ignoring Rose’s weak protests that those were locked up. Dave manages to avoid Terezi when she breaks unceremoniously in between Jade and Karkat and ignores Karkat in favor of dancing with his girlfriend.

They do a pretty fucking good job of avoiding each other all night. In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that around eleven Terezi starts to feel the need to get some air, they could probably go on avoiding each other for the rest of the night.

But as it is, Dave is floating on his back in the pool in the backyard in nothing but his boxers and his shades, eyes closed and staring up at the stars when the sliding glass door opens and breaks his concentration.

He doesn’t think Terezi notices him, not at first, not until he says, because he’s a fucking moron and he can’t keep his fucking mouth shut, “You remember when you’d sleepover at my place in high school? And we’d sneak out and go skinny dipping in the pool?”

Terezi will furiously curse at herself later for not getting up right then and there. She’ll be so fucking angry at herself for not lying and saying “no”. Instead, she cackles softly down at the drink in her hands and says, “And that time your Bro caught us but instead of kicking me out he stripped down and jumped in with us.”

Dave laughs, that full, long, hard laugh that he only laughs when he’s alone, with maybe one or two people, and even then only when he’s drunk. “D’ya ever wish you could go back?” There’s the slightest trace of a slur there, and on top of it the lightest touch of that Southern drawl that he hates so much. It only ever comes out when he’s really drunk – when he’s honestly, truly, 100%, gonna-hate-himself-in-the-morning drunk.

Terezi makes her second mistake of the night by indulging him (and if she’s being honest, herself) and saying, “Maybe,” but it’s soft, and he never answers, and she wonders if he even heard her at all.

She’s contemplating just getting up and leaving, giving up on trying to make Dave make sense, when she hears a shift in the water.

Dave doesn’t really know what he’s doing. He slowly moves out of the water and then, shivering, makes his way over to the lounge chair she’s seated on and sits down next to her, dripping onto the patio, his boxers sticking to him and probably showing off the spectacular boner he’s got going on. He’d never admit it out loud, but he is sometimes intensely glad that Terezi’s blind.

He opens his mouth and says, quietly, like this is confession and Terezi is his guilty priest kink, “I’m really drunk.”

Terezi makes her third mistake of the night by not stopping herself from saying, “Me too.”

Dave doesn’t know he’s gonna do it until he does – he just reaches out with one dripping arm and lays it around her shoulders and pulls her to him, and then their lips touch, gently at first, and then hard and fast and rough and bruising, and they don’t pull away for air, and suddenly that boner he’s got going on is the only thing he can think of and the fact that this is Terezi, warm and real and strong and perfect, next to him, only makes it even worse.

In the end, neither of them are really sure how they get back to the hotel that Dave’s sharing with John. And it’s kind of a miracle that John doesn’t show up in the middle of the night to find them fucking each other into the mattress. Dave can only hope that he didn’t tell John that this was going to happen.

(They won’t find out until much later, but he most certainly did. In fact, he announced it to the entire party, one hand around Tz’s waist and one hand holding up his jeans. It silenced the whole group, except for Gamzee, who just laughed and said, “Right on, motherfucker,” and passed Dave a joint. Dave took one long drag, and then threw it to the floor and shouted something incomprehensible but still vulgar enough that it made Equius turn away blushing, and then he dragged his girl out of there.)

They lose themselves in the swell of Terezi’s breasts, the little gasps that Dave breathes out with every thrust, the way they collapse on top of each other when it’s done. They lose count of how many times they do it, fucking and then falling asleep and then waking up and then fucking again.

They’re awful for each other. When they’re together, they make shitty decisions and they fuck each other up and they fight like every problem is the end of the world and they only know how to make up by having sex. They’ll only remember snapshots of that night – Dave will remember the way Terezi moaned when he hooked his fingers deep inside her, the way she clenched around him when she came, the way she pulled the covers up over them when they were done and too tired to get up and clean themselves off. Terezi will remember that they didn’t use a condom because they’d already screwed each other over enough times as it was, that sometime around six am they finally did get out of bed to clean up but instead Dave ended up fucking her against the wall of the shower and afterwards he slipped and hit his head, that the last time they fucked before they finally fell asleep for real, Dave was slow and agonizingly careful with her, and he made sure she came first, and when he finally tipped over the edge he whispered in her ear, over and over and over, “I love you I love you I love you.”

(She doesn’t know what to do with that information.)

They don’t get back together, because that would be fucking stupid, and this is a breakup, as Terezi reminds herself furiously when she escapes to her own hotel room early in the morning before Dave wakes up. Breakups do not end in make-up sex and getting back together. They end in heartache and crying into pillows and then, finally, moving on.

So they don’t get back together. But two weeks later Dave calls her up and tells her he’s got a twelve-pack of beer and nothing to do and for some reason she answers when her phone rings and she comes when he calls. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, she doesn’t know why she lets herself fuck herself up like this, but she does it, even though she knows what’s going to happen when she gets there – or maybe because of it.

Karkat knows about what happened at the party but doesn’t suspect a thing. He knows she’s going out, but he has _no_ idea it’s Dave. He takes her to the drug store to get the pill when she asks for it, and if he complains, it’s no more than he complains when she asks him to buy her tampons. In fact, he _encourages_ this, tells her to go out and have fun when she has to cancel their plans, though she suspects it’s partly because that means he gets to spend more time alone with Jade and hey, more power to him. She just feels guilty. It feels like lying.

For his part, nobody knows that Dave’s fucking Terezi. Nobody knows that Dave’s fucking anyone, actually, because once Dave found out that John knew where he’d gone that night he just kind of stopped answering his phone calls and texts and Facebook messages and timeline posts. He hasn’t spoken with Bro since he moved out, except for Christmas and their respective birthdays. Rose has her hands full with the wedding, Jade has her hands full with Karkat. And besides, Dave doesn’t really feel like taking crap for still being in love with Terezi.

Because okay, he’ll admit it. He’s man enough for that. He’s in love with Terezi, he’s always _been_ in love with Terezi, and he’s always _going_ to be in love with Terezi. It’s dangerous, unhealthy, sickening love that involves lots of fighting and lots of sex and lots of bad decisions, but he reminds himself every time he wakes up in bed alone after a night of that ridiculous, rough, vicious sex that he never wanted the white picket fence and 2.5 kids anyway.

Neither of them ever suggests taking it any further, never suggests dinner or a movie, even just as friends, because they both know that it wouldn’t be just as friends, and that the only way they’ve ever worked when they’re together is when they’re having sex, and it’s obvious that neither can give the other up, so they stick to the sex, because that’s the only way they know how to deal with each other.

Or at least, they mostly stick to the sex. Every now and then, Dave will run out of condoms or Terezi will forget her morning after pill, but neither of them ever brings it up, and nobody gets sick, and nobody gets pregnant, so it’s no big deal. Every now and then, Terezi will forget to set her alarm, and so at eight am she’ll wake up tangled up around Dave and she’ll feel the self-hatred rise up and she’ll roll out of bed before she knows what she’s doing, but it’s all okay because Dave never knows. Every now and then, Dave will trace designs into Terezi’s skin, but she never realizes that the designs read _“I love you”_ , so it doesn’t really matter.

One time, Terezi brings a bottle of whiskey because they want to pretend that they’re hardcore, and they both get really badly drunk because neither of them has ever been able to hold their liquor, and they jump each other’s bones after about two drinks, and afterwards Dave wraps his arms around her and just mumbles into her shoulder.

He’s not saying much, just complaining about how his back hurts and he needs new sheets and he needs to go shopping but he sucks at doing it alone, and he doesn’t even realize that she’s left until she comes back with another set of drinks. He downs it in one, and then they fuck again, and then afterwards he pulls her back into his arms, and he whispers into the side of her neck, in between kisses and bites and licks.

This time, he’s saying things, though. Real things. Things like, “I don’t know why you keep coming back, but I’m so glad you do. I need you here, I can’t sleep when you’re not here. I have to bunch up pillows behind me or sleep with my back against the wall, or anything just to trick my mind into thinking you’re here. The neighbors hate you because they see you coming up the stairs and they know that we’re gonna make way too much fucking noise and that’s perfect, I love that, I love that they know who you are.”

He doesn’t think Terezi’s paying attention, but she is. She doesn’t say anything out loud, but she thinks it. She thinks, _I hate you so much. I hate how much you love me and I hate that I can’t let you go because I’m afraid of what you’ll do, and also because I don’t know what I’d do if I could never see you again. And I hate that I need this, your arms around me and your dick getting hard again and these shitty sheets, just to be happy and be able to fall asleep. And I hate that I can’t just be normal and get my law degree and be happy, I hate that I need the danger and the lies and the shoplifting and the dine-and-dash and the fighting and the sex._

She purposely doesn’t set her alarm, because it’s a Friday night (or Saturday morning, maybe, she doesn’t even know anymore) and she doesn’t have to work tomorrow and she doesn’t think she can leave right now without feeling even shittier than she normally does.

She wakes slowly in the morning, peacefully, and she finds that her face is only inches from his (she can feel his breath on her nose, the heat of his face, the dip in the bed), their hands clasped in between their bodies, and he’s wide awake, and when he sees her eyes open, he leans his head forward just enough to kiss her.

The kiss starts off soft and gentle and it’s everything that Dave wants from her but will never tell her while he’s sober and everything that Terezi’s afraid to give into but wants so, _so_ bad, and so she forces it over the edge, bites at his lips and forces her tongue between his teeth, and even if it’s still slow and lazy, it’s enough. They do it like that, slow and lazy and easy, but satisfying and perfect, and Terezi can’t help but cry out when he reaches a hand down to rub at her at the spot where they meet, and it’s _perfect_.

She climbs out of bed later (could be minutes, could be hours, could be days) and showers while he strips the sheets off. She comes back wrapped in a towel, hair dripping on the floor, because she only brought the whiskey and the clothes she came in. She grabs her clothes off the floor and dresses quickly in the bathroom with the door open, and when she’s done and she’s just pulling a comb through her hair, he comes up behind her and she feels something settle around her neck.

“What are you—” she starts, reaching a hand up to feel, and her hands touch familiar metal, in the shape of a dragon, and she knows the red cord immediately, even if she’s never seen it.

“You forgot this when you left,” he says quietly, low and rough, and when he’s done fastening it, he steps back and moves to turn the shower back on.

They both know that she didn’t forget it. She left it on purpose, just like she left every other gift he’d ever given her, minus the statues. She’d figured he could pawn some of it if money got tight, get some extra cash. And yet here it is, his one year anniversary gift to her, clasped securely around her neck like a noose. Or a promise.

(She kisses him goodbye when he gets out of the shower because she’s done caring.)

When she gets home, she can immediately feel Karkat’s eyes on her, and she spits, before he can get a word out, “I don’t wanna hear it!”

She hears Jade snicker and immediately regrets coming home like this. She doesn’t want to deal with this with Jade here. She wishes she had a room to stomp off to and hide in.

“All I’m saying,” Karkat says slowly, with a trace of a smile in his voice (and Terezi loves Jade to death for being able to make him smile; she could never do that, no matter how hard she tried), “is if you’re staying the night and obviously waking up with him, or her, then it must be getting pretty serious.”

“It’s not like that,” she grumbles, throwing her purse in what she thinks is the direction of his face. She obviously misses, though, because she hears it hit the side of the couch, and she growls to herself and turns to get a cup of coffee because fucking Dave and his fucking coffee machine that’s been broken for _weeks_ , and oh, of _course_ , why doesn’t she just go to Starbucks? Well fuck you, Dave Strider. Fuck you and your expensive hipster bullshit coffee.

“Where’d you get that, then?” Karkat asks, and she frowns.

“Get what?”

“The necklace.”

Terezi’s hand shoots up to her neck automatically and grumbles, “I’ve had it,” while Jade squeals and jumps up from the couch and runs over, saying, “Let me see, let me see!”

Karkat snorts, “Yeah? You weren’t wearing it last night,” and Jade pulls Terezi’s hands away and _shit_ , she can feel the frown.

“I’ve seen this before,” Jade says slowly, as if trying to place it. “Didn’t Dave give this to you?”

Terezi swats her hands away and reaches up to take the damn thing off. “Doesn’t matter, okay?”

“You haven’t worn that since you two broke up,” Karkat says, and his voice is getting dangerous. “Why are you wearing it now?”

“I said it doesn’t matter!”

“Like hell it doesn’t matter!” And he slams his hands down on the counter and _shit_ , she hadn’t realized he’d gotten up. “You said you left all the stuff he gave you at his place!”

“I did!” she challenges. “He dropped it by the other day!”

“ _Liar_.”

“Why would I lie about this?” she demands. “You know as well as I do that I want nothing to do with the guy, so can you just leave it alone?”

“No, I can’t just leave it alone!” He shoves a finger against her chest, and she bares her teeth angrily, about to spit a retort, but he cuts her off before she can. “You can’t claim not to want anything to do with him and then go and fucking sneak off and _sleep with him_ at Rose and Kanaya’s engagement party! Because of you two, that whole party turned into a ‘let’s talk about Strider fucking Terezi’ gossip event!”

“Karkat,” Jade says, a warning tone in her voice, but he growls, honest to god _growls_ , and she shuts up.

“What are you accusing me of?” Terezi asks, her voice quiet and dangerous. “You think I’m seeing him again? I’m not, you don’t have to worry. I learned my lesson.”

“I don’t think you did,” Karkat whispers. “I think you’re lying to me. I think you’re still in love with him, and this whole time you’ve been going out on weekends you’ve actually been going to see him and— _oh_.”

_Fuck_.

“The pills,” he murmurs. “And the condoms. Getting home way before you normally would if it was just an ordinary one-night stand. Fuck. You’re _fucking_ him!”

“What if I am?” She can’t help but explode, her defenses rising, and she shoves him in the chest, away from her. “It’s _my_ life, Karkat! You don’t get to control me!”

“I’m not trying to control you, I’m trying to _protect_ you!”

“I don’t need you to _protect_ me, either,” she snarls. “I can take care of myself, all right? Yeah, I’m fucking Dave. There, happy? You glad I said it? And you know what? Yeah, I’m still in love with him, and I’m probably always gonna be in love with him, and I can’t fucking do anything about it, so _fuck you_. I have tried so fucking hard to get over him, because I know he’s not good for me, and I know I’m not good for him, but you know what? Sometimes shit doesn’t work out the way you think it will. Once upon a time, I thought I was gonna _marry you_ , and we can all see how well that worked out.”

She takes a deep breath, and her chest catches on a sob. She has to swallow it down hard, and it hurts to say the next few words. “I love him, okay? I don’t know why, because all we do is fight and have sex and drink, but I love him. I know it’s stupid, I know I’m getting myself into trouble, but I can’t just walk away from him, no matter how hard I try. And if this is the only thing I’m ever gonna get from him that keeps everyone happy, then so be it.”

Karkat and Jade just stand there in stunned silence, and Terezi can feel the next sob rising up in her chest, and she can’t do this now, not in front of Karkat, and especially not with Jade here, so she grabs her purse off the floor from by the couch and she walks out the door and heads for the bus stop.

(Karkat yells and shouts and throws things at the wall, and Jade cries and wonders if he’s still in love with Terezi. He isn’t, but she doesn’t know that. Neither of them knows that.)

Meanwhile, Dave calls John back for the first time in forever, and they both resolutely ignore the fact that Dave Slept With Terezi Again, and the conversation is stilted and awkward, but finally John starts tell him, slowly and with a blush that spreads all the way to his _voice_ , about how he went on a date with Vriska, and hell, Dave doesn’t exactly approve, but then, John’s never approved of Dave’s choices, either, has he?

He hangs up afterwards and sighs, and then he showers again, just to waste time, and then he spreads himself across the couch and watches _Duck Dynasty_ and _Here Comes Honey Boo Boo_ until his brains are about to melt out of his ears – or until there’s a knock on the door. Same difference.

He sighs, shuts the TV off, gets up, pulls the door open, and is thoroughly kissed by somebody.

It takes him a moment to realize that he knows the lips that are pressed against his, and he is more than okay with this. She’s pressing him inside, shoving the door closed behind them, and her hands are already working at his belt buckle and he laughs, pushes her hands away and says, “Hey, slow down, we’ve got all day.”

“No, we fucking _don’t_ ,” she hisses, and she grabs one of his hands and shoves it down the waistband of her yoga pants, and hey, he’s fine with this.

They end up on the couch instead of the bed. He slides his fingers between her legs until her knees are like jelly, and she jerks him off hard and fast, and almost as soon as he’s done she’s ready to go again, only for real this time, pulling a condom out of her purse and fumbling with the wrapper.

“Whoa girl,” he says, grabbing her wrist. “Give a guy a minute. I’m still tired from last night, just relax, okay?”

“Fuck _you_ ,” she whispers.

“Well, I was kind of thinking the other way around, but—”

“Just shut up,” she cuts in. Her voice is angry, and her whole body’s shaking, he realizes suddenly, and he reaches up and grabs her by the shoulders.

“Jesus, Tz, what the hell?” he whispers.

“Fuck,” she spits out from between her teeth, and her arms finally give out and she lands on top of him and buries her face in his neck and cries into the shirt he never took off.

He doesn’t know what to do – he has no fucking _clue_ what to do – so he just kind of rubs his hands up and down her back awkwardly, but that does nothing, because she just punches him in the arm.

“What do you want me to do?” he asks, and if it comes out as a whine, well, he has no fucking clue what he’s doing, so he thinks he can get away with it.

“I want you to stop _doing this!_ ”

“Doing what?”

“Stop letting me come back and kiss you and let you fuck me and stop being everything I want! God!” She reaches for his dick, but oh no, as bad as he wants her, he is not fucking going down that road until he gets a straight answer, and he catches her hands in his.

“I miss you,” she breathes around a sob. “I miss you so fucking bad and I fucking hate it. All we did was fight and have sex and it _sucked_ and then all of the sudden we didn’t do either and that sucked even more and then I left you and I didn’t even know it was possible but that sucked even worse and I don’t know who I am anymore if you’re not with me or inside me and I fucking _hate it_. I don’t _want_ this! I don’t wanna be in love with you!”

He freezes, every muscle in his body tensing. “You’re in love with me?” he whispers.

“Jesus Christ, of course I’m in love with you! Do you really think I’d be here at all if I wasn’t?”

Well, yes, to be honest. That was exactly what he thought. And his silence must tell her just that because she laughs, and it isn’t her usual cackle, it’s just her, laughing, and it’s bitter and it hurts him to hear. “God, you are so fucking _dumb_. I’m in love with you, I’ve always been in love with you, you fucking idiot. You’re all I want out of life and I hate myself for it but I fucking need you, _all the time_.”

“Fuck, Tz,” he whispers, because he has no idea what the fuck else he’s supposed to say.

“God damn it,” she whispers, and then she presses her lips to his and suddenly it’s like all the urgency trails away. It’s not her usual kiss, the kind where she’s only asking him for sex. It’s the kind they used to exchange, when they were still dating, when they were still in high school and everything was normal. It’s slow and loving and when her tongue touches his it’s not because she wants him to take her panties off, it’s because she wants him to hold her close, so he does, and her hands come up to cup his face, and she catches his lip between her teeth and then pulls away slowly.

His lips hurt and her skin is red and flushed, and she whispers, “Please tell me you missed me.”

“Jesus, of course I fucking missed you, you dumb bitch.” He kisses her again, quick and chaste this time. “I’ve been in love with you since the day I met you.”

“Take me back,” she whispers, and she sounds like she’s about to cry, so he kisses her once more and tells her, “Always,” and that’s that.

And this time when she reaches for the condom, he doesn’t protest. They fuck, and they fall asleep right there on the couch and Karkat calls Terezi four times but she doesn’t answer, even once they’re awake again. She listens to her voicemail and then she drags Dave to bed, and then the shower, and by that time it’s nearly eight pm and Dave doesn’t have any food in the fridge so they go to IHOP and eat about twenty pancakes and steal food off each other’s plates and they leave without paying and she hangs off his arm and laughs so hard that she can’t breathe and he smiles like he hasn’t smiled in forever and when they get back to his apartment he catches her face between his hands and whispers “I love you” and kisses her and she drags him inside and they do it again.

(Karkat loses his shit. John just sighs. Jade says she hopes they have better luck this time. Bro sends Dave a couple smuppets but he’s too embarrassed to do anything other than shove them deep, deep, deep into the hallway closet and never look at them again. Terezi’s mom cries over the phone.)

(They still fight, and they still compromise with sex, but they go out and buy new sheets, and Terezi doesn’t take off the dragon necklace even to shower, and Dave builds her a bookshelf to hold her piles of books, and she lets him take pictures of her and they go on real dates and they kiss on New Year’s. They still drink too much and smoke too much and have too much sex, but they’re finally, _finally_ happy.)

(They never can go back to that IHOP, though.)


End file.
